This year has seen an uptick in the deaths of endangered North Atlantic right whales. In January, a weeks-old newborn calf was killed off South Carolina, and a dead right whale washed up on Martha’s Vineyard soon afterward. In February, a deceased right whale washed ashore on Virginia Breach, and a dead juvenile female was found floating off the coast of Georgia. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, all were killed from blunt force trauma.
One of the top threats to right whales, which traverse the East Coast of the U.S. and north to Canada, is being struck by a boat, which can cause death or injury from blunt-force trauma or propeller cuts. What we know is that speeding boats and whales don’t mix. Slow swimmers, these whales stay close to the water’s surface to breathe and give birth to their calves every year in the warm waters off the southeast U.S. coast. Every day they swim in danger of a boat strike.
Right whales, once numerous off the East Coast, were decimated during the commercial whaling era and have been slow to recover. They migrate annually from calving grounds off Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia to feeding grounds off New England and Canada. The journey has become perilous in recent years because their food sources appear to be moving north as waters warm. That change causes whales to stray from protected areas of ocean and become vulnerable to collisions and commercial fishing gear entanglements.
It’s estimated that there just 356 right whales left, including 70 breeding females. That’s down from an estimated 425 just over a decade ago. A recent report hreleased by Oceana found that most boats are violating speed limits through slow zones designed to protect these critically endangered whales. Oceana analyzed boat speeds from November 2020 through July 2022 in slow zones established by the along the U.S. East Coast and found that 84% of boats sped through mandatory slow zones, and 82% of boats sped through voluntary slow zones.
Studies have found that limiting boat speeds to 10 knots is estimated to reduce a North Atlantic right whale’s risk of death from being killed by a boat over 65 feet by between 80% and 90%. In 2022, the federal government proposed new safeguards for these whales, which have yet to be finalized. Current speed restrictions only apply to vessels 65 feet or greater, yet three of the four known vessel strikes of mother and calf pairs since 2020 have involved vessels between 35 and 65 feet.
Current safeguards are not enough. If approved as drafted, the new rule would update the timing and location of seasonal mandatory slow zones to reflect the current footprint of North Atlantic right whales compared to where the whales were 15 years ago; make compliance with voluntary Dynamic Management Areas mandatory; and expand the rule to include boats 35 feet or greater. The president and the commerce secretary must release the final updated Vessel Speed Rule. And once they do, boaters need to comply, and the rule properly enforced, to save these whales from extinction.
Boaters are key to improving right whale fatalities—all it would take is for boaters to slow down so that these whales have a chance to survive. Long after we’re gone, will our grandchildren even know these majestic creatures once existed? We must make sure that they do.
Marblehead resident Robert Howie is Sailors for the Sea Skipper for Marblehead, part of Oceana, the world’s largest ocean conservation organization. He is a board member of Sustainable Marblehead.
